The Photography Museum in November 21, 2024, is launching the series of events, which invite visitors to get reacquainted with perhaps undeservedly forgotten authors who were once active creators of artistic photography or exhibition organisers.

This year, the event series will present three photographers from Šiauliai: Povilas Steponavičius, Algimantas Puodžiūnas and Vaidotas Kisielis, representing different periods of the development of photography in Šiauliai and Lithuania as well as different generations of photographers. Their activities in the 1950s-1980s were significant in developing fine-art photography, exhibition activities, and museum studies.

“When assessing the development of artistic photography in Lithuania in the second half of the 20th century, it is important to understand the political context in which it evolved. During the Soviet occupation, the political conjuncture had a significant impact on artists’ creative freedom. In the first post-war decade, with prevailing ideological reportage photo-propaganda, artistic photography in the public space had no rights at all. It was only in the late 1950s, as the political regime was softening, that the first tentative public creative attempts of photographers gradually emerged. One of them was P. Steponavičius, an author who, unfortunately, is deceased today, whom we know as one of the first participants in photographic art exhibitions of that period,” says Vilija Ulinskytė-Balzienė, the head of the Photography Museum.

Later, in the 1960s, as the photography community grew and became increasingly mobilised, the Šiauliai Photo Club was founded, and for some time, its leader was another author presented in the series of events A. Puodžiūnas.

“During this period, despite the persistent censorship, creators already have more freedom of self-expression, their creative work is diversifying, and exhibition activities are intensifying. In the early 1970s, the Photography Museum was established in Šiauliai and a little earlier, the Lithuanian Society of Art Photography (now, the Lithuanian Photographers Association). V. Kisielis, a long-tenured director of the Photography Museum, was also actively involved in its activities. We will present the creative work of this author, his activities in preserving the photographic legacy, and the organisational work in photo art exhibitions, carried out together with the founder of the museum A. Dilys during the heyday of Lithuanian fine-art photography. We wanted to honour these personalities, remember their creative work and the work they have done, introduce the creators of the past to the modern generation, which did not have the opportunity to know them, and at the same time, to remind them to our contemporaries,” says V. Ulinskytė-Balzienė.

Organiser: Šiauliai Aušra Museum, The Photography Museum

Coordinator: Viktoras Gundajevas

Communication designer: Darius Linkevičius